


a gentle touch

by nihonlove



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Backstory, Child Abandonment, Foster Care, Hugs, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, POV Third Person Limited, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 02, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihonlove/pseuds/nihonlove
Summary: Keith, and touch.





	a gentle touch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eghfeithrean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eghfeithrean/gifts), [Tarilca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarilca/gifts).



> ^ Because you're both to blame that I'm in this mess :P.
> 
> Also, hi everyone else who might be reading. I'm new here and I'm just testing out character voices with this :). And yes, this is about The Hug(TM). At least a bit.
> 
> Not beta read because one of the worst parts of getting into a new fandom is finding one.

Touch has always been something that Keith thought of as somewhat peculiar.

He knows instinctively and from all that he’s read and learned that touch is something that humans need – crave, even – in order to connect with one another, to stay sane and healthy. It’s just something that Keith has never really been able to understand outside of the intellectual level of it. Whenever he thinks of being touched, what tends to come into mind first are his occasional dreams of someone tall and graceful picking him up and holding him in her arms. He can never see her face but he always knows who she is supposed to be. Whether she actually held him in her arms like that for real when she was still around or if it’s just something his pathetic mind conjured up to torture him is another story. But they’ve nonetheless always made touch seem more complicated for Keith than he thought it was supposed to be.

The only person Keith can remember in his childhood whose touch ever felt uncomplicated was his father. Perhaps it’s just because he seemed to generally be as averse to the idea of it as Keith, but regardless the memories of his father’s touch always seem to be the clearest ones he has of him, and the happiest. Keith can remember his father’s big, calloused hands and the way they stroked his hair, patted his shoulder or, during a few rare occasions, held him in a gentle hug. He can remember the way the touch felt almost like warm electricity on his skin, like there were vibrations being passed from his father’s hands onto him. It was like touching a radiator on a very cold day. The touch seems to make everything more real for him in his memories, even after all these years.  When his father was in direct contact with him like that now feel like the only times his father was really present for Keith. The rest of the time, even before he disappeared for good, he tended to keep so to himself and not share any of his thoughts, buried deep in his various projects and work that Keith could never figure out.

After his father vanished and Keith was placed into his first foster family, touch started to reach that point with him where it became something he actively wished to avoid. Perhaps it was just because he’d never been pushed to touch so much with his father, but even now thinking about it, the way it was so suddenly thrown towards him makes his skin crawl. It wasn’t that the first family he was placed with wasn’t nice. They were, and it wasn’t like they touched him in any wrong way either. Had he known what was coming ahead, he would’ve appreciated them more back then, he likes to think, even if he knows that Mr. and Mrs. Cain were a bad fit for him from the start. They had clearly expected something completely different from what they got with him. A more normal, open child. And normal and open have never been words that first come to mind when thinking of Keith.

The situation was made all the worse by the fact that at that point Keith was still expecting for his father to come and get him soon enough. He didn’t understand why he was being left to live with these strange new people, or why they kept telling him his father wasn’t coming back, and why they kept asking him questions and trying to make him talk when he and his father had always been comfortable sharing a mutual silence. They constantly tried to give him hugs and pat his hair, and it felt strange to him, intrusive. Their hugs felt like being forced to wear a very itchy and uncomfortable sweater, so unlike the welcome warmth his father had once provided for him. It made him feel like these people were trying to take his father’s place when he didn’t want them touching him in the first place.

Mr. and Mrs. Cain kept feeding and clothing him for another six months, giving him a roof over his head. Keith kept to his own more and more because it was the only way to avoid them and their hurt expressions when he pulled away from them. He still went to school every day and did his homework, but he mostly stayed out of the house or in his room. They all hung in there for those six months, but evidently that was all Mr. and Mrs. Cain could bear of their sullen new foster son. They had to accept that Keith was never going to be the kid they’d wanted – one that would smile and bring friends home and maybe join the baseball team – and so his foster parents contacted his case worker and he was placed with another family.

It began a pattern. Keith became labeled as the sullen, grouchy kid who almost never smiled, didn’t play well with others, was cold and hated being touched. His case worker always tended to say that Keith was lucky to be placed in any family at all, even when those places gave Keith whole new reasons to hate being touched. He eventually learned to kick, punch and bite back when needed, but all that left him with was gaining the labels of “aggressive and temperamental” into his File of Labels and being kicked out of yet another foster home.

After that, he only stayed with one more proper family before his final placement into the group home where he’d remain for the rest of his time in the system. Mrs. and Mrs. Gomez were kind and gentle and didn’t push him to do anything he wasn’t comfortable with like the Cains had, and at that point Keith would’ve given almost anything to get to be a part of their family for good. But his placement with them was to be only a temporary arrangement, and they all knew it. The Gomez family already had five other foster kids, and they couldn’t take in another one permanently. Keith was only there until a place opened up for him at the group home, and his only goal was to make as little of a nuisance of himself as possible for the short time he was to stay. He’d learned not to trust these placements to stick, and he didn’t even try to push for or ask about being able to stay with this family for good.

And indeed, the only thing he did push was push Sylvie Gomez away from him when she tried to hug him after he’d gotten a good grade on a school assignment on the history of airplanes. Because it had felt nice, being hugged like that. He imagined it might’ve been what a mother’s hug might feel like, if he’d ever actually gotten to experience that. But he also knew if he let himself enjoy it, he’d miss it too much when it was gone, and that it would be gone in a very short time.

So he pushed her away, apologized, and ran away. She didn’t bring it up again, and he wasn’t sure if he hated that or was grateful for it. She didn’t try to hug him goodbye when after two weeks, he was sent to the group home, unable to stop wondering if he’d been allowed to stay after all if he’d just hugged her back or even just allowed her to keep holding him.

Despite everything, Keith managed to reach the end point of being in foster care without any actual criminal charges or stints at the juvi, so he was able to apply to the Galaxy Garrison without issue. With the path to his future set before him and being able to leave the system, Keith breathed a little easier for the first time in years. Indeed, if anyone had cared enough to ask him about it back then, he probably would’ve told them that he’d applied to the Garrison in the first place because it was his best and earliest possible escape from the system and the hand he’d been given as a child. It was a chance at a slightly better life, at better opportunities for himself, even a chance at a bit of an adventure.

But secretly, while browsing the flier for the Garrison at night in his bunk, Keith caressed over the pictures of stars and thought about the long nights in the desert with his father, where they’d been able to see them so clearly above them, how his father had told him about the Garrison and how Keith could’ve sworn something about the stars seemed to call out to him, as if compelling him to walk amongst them one day. He didn’t really put much faith in destiny or anything, really, but if there was anything resembling a calling for him out there…he was certain this was it. And he was damned as hell going to make the most of it.

Not even a week had passed for Keith at the Galaxy Garrison when he knew for sure, without any shred of doubt that this was exactly where he wanted and needed to be. Flying, even in the stimulator, was a thrill he’d never known before, and he even found he was already quite good at it. The teachers called him a natural, a prodigy, and Keith felt almost like he had never truly breathed before he got to experience flight among the stars for the first time.

It was even enough to make up for the fact aside from the lessons and being able to fly, the Garrison wasn’t much different from the group home. Far too many kids were still sharing far too small a space, there were a lot of strict rules to be followed, people whispered about him, and he wasn’t able to form any friendships. But he was used to that by that point. It was easier, in any case, to just be alone. Being alone meant he wouldn’t have to miss anyone when they all eventually graduated and lost touch, and he wouldn’t have to explain himself or his weird habits to anyone. It was fine that he couldn’t connect with people, because he now had a purpose. He now had a chance to actually make something of himself, and do something he actually loved with his life.

It was fine.

And then he met Shiro.

Keith had seen him around a few times around the Garrison of course, even managed to hear the whispers about his reputation as the most promising cadet in years. And as much as Keith had tried to ignore it, he couldn’t deny he’d been intrigued when the word had gotten out that Shiro would be coming to his class to give instructions and show his skills to the junior cadets.

The first thing Keith noticed about Shiro when he finally arrived in his class and he could see him properly for the first time, rather than just around the corner or across the mess hall, was that he stood like a proper soldier. His spine was straight as a needle, and his salute to Commander Iverson sharp and precise. The second thing he noticed was that the look he gave to the class was warm, kind and encouraging. Keith had never seen such an expression on anyone directed at a bunch of teenagers, and he had to steel himself so he wouldn’t turn his eyes away. Looking at Shiro’s dark liquid eyes and his bright white teeth seemed almost like staring into the sun, especially when it was all complimented by his charming, boyish good looks.

(He’d looked so young, so unburdened by the weight of the world back then.)

Perhaps it was inevitable then, that his life would be entwined with Shiro’s from then on. Perhaps if he’d never seen Shiro fly, he could’ve had a chance to get away still at that time. But once he saw Shiro fly the stimulator, with that same expression of euphoria on his face that Keith always felt down in his very bones every time he got to fly…he knew. And maybe it was meaningless, maybe Keith would never actually even talk to Shiro, but just seeing him like that made him feel a little less strange about himself. A little less alone. It was the first genuine connection to another human being he’d felt in a long time, possibly ever. And maybe it would never be real or reciprocated, but just knowing there was someone out there who _got_ it…it was enough.

But because Keith was still Keith, he had been willing to leave it at that, and not approach Shiro at all. It was Shiro who sought _him_ out, after the lesson. He told Keith he’d been impressed by Keith’s own show of skill in the flight stimulator. And then he’d given him that smile, the same smile he’d given the entire class before. Except this time, it was just for Keith, and Keith was drowning, unable and unwilling to save himself. And he never would be again.  

Because Shiro seemed to not only get flying, he also seemed to get _Keith_. He didn’t go easy on him in hand-to-hand combat when they trained together, he talked when Keith didn’t want to be in silence, listened the rare occasions when Keith wanted to talk and was quiet with Keith when he wanted to be silent. He asked Keith for his opinion on things and actually _listened_ to them. He challenged Keith to be better, but he never pushed past his boundaries. He never tried to touch Keith if Keith seemed even the slightest bit uncomfortable with it, and he let Keith set the pace and take the lead with that. Keith had never had anyone like Shiro in his life.

Because to him, Shiro really was the sun that everyone seemed to revolve around. Keith was lost in his orbit, unable to do anything but bask in his warmth and draw a little bit of his light for himself. That light that seemed to have lit a permanent warmth in his chest, one that actually, for the first time in his life, made him _want_ to reach out touch Shiro. And one day, without even thinking about it, he did just that, patting Shiro’s shoulder at the end of a training session. Keith was thankful Shiro didn’t make a big number out of it, because afterwards he was pretty embarrassed about it.

But it was a start. Shiro occasionally began to touch him too, in a similar manner. It was just a soft, gentle, friendly touch, but for once, Keith welcomed it from another person. For the first time since he lost his father, touch from another person’s hand felt warm, comforting, and safe. Shiro still let him lead them forward, and Keith took his time in finding his footing, but they began to move forward to high fives and pats on the back, calming touches on the arm and resting heads on each other’s shoulders if they sat side by side.  

And then, when the time came for the two of them to say goodbye before Shiro left for the Kerberos mission, Shiro took a gentle hold of his hand, gave him a questioning look, and then pulled him into an embrace.

Much like now.

Because right now, Keith is in Shiro’s arms again, just before another mission that is different but probably even more dangerous than Kerberos had been, breathing in Shiro’s smell from where his nose is pressed to Shiro’s shoulder. There’s a hint of the material that their Paladin armor is made of mixed with Shiro’s natural scent, as well as a little sweat, but it all helps ground him in this moment. The past few days have gone by in such a whirlwind in more ways than one that now, when Keith is given even the briefest of moments to reflect on them, he feels almost dizzy with all that has happened. The thought of his revealed heritage and what it might mean still hasn’t quite settled within him. He hasn’t had the time to reflect on it, and now is not the time for that either. The mission must take priority, and Keith is honestly a little grateful he doesn’t have to dwell too much on personal matters at the moment. He’s not sure how he’d feel if he did.

Right now, he’s just grateful for Shiro’s warmth around him, and the fact he can hold him in return and relish in the fact that he’s here, with him, like this. This, at least, hasn’t changed. He and Shiro had talked a bit after they’d returned from the base of the Blade of Marmora, and Shiro had reassured him that nothing that they’d learned had changed anything about how Shiro sees him. But now, in his arms, Keith realizes he hadn’t really fully believed that until this moment. Shiro hasn’t become averse to his touch, or being close to him, when he has all the reason to hate Keith for the blood that runs in his veins. He wouldn’t have blamed Shiro if he’d reacted more like Allura, barely able to look at Keith’s way, let alone talk to him or hold him like this. It’s only now that Keith feels like he can breathe properly, can finally exhale after holding his breath for days – maybe weeks, if counted from when he first began to suspect his heritage.

Touch has always been something that Keith thought of as somewhat peculiar.

But he welcomes it now and always from Shiro, and is glad to give it back in return. Even if that is something Keith really doesn’t want to think about, he knows that just like that time, this may very well be the last time the two of them see each other alive and well. And if this is it, this is something Keith wants to have and wants to give Shiro in return to carry with him to the end of the war. Just a simple touch, a simple way to say, “Please be safe, and please come back to me.”

It’s more important than anything else right now. Including any aversions he may have or have had for being touched.

Shiro has always been the exception to all his rules, anyway.


End file.
